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debatem1 writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA has decided to abandon its current tactic of suing individuals for sharing copyrighted music. Ongoing lawsuits will be pursued to completion, but no new ones will be filed. The RIAA is going to try working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users. This very surprising development apparently comes as a result of public distaste for the campaign." An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."

We are a group of UK film and TV producers, directors and writers. We are concerned that the successes of the creative industries in the UK are being undermined by the illegal online file-sharing [today.com] of film and TV.

We are asking the Government to show its support by ensuring that internet service providers play their part in tackling this huge problem by giving us money. Lots of money. Just keep piling it in, we'll tell you when it's enough.

In 2007, up to (well, it could be) 25 per cent of all online TV piracy took place in the UK. Popular shows are downloaded illegally hundreds of thousands of times per episode, and some of them might even be ours rather than something American made with an actual budget.

It is true that in 2008, UK commercial TV broadcasters enjoyed the highest viewing figures in five years, that total TV viewing was up 10% year-on-year, and the valuable yet hard-to-reach 16 to 24-year-old demographic (the typical file-sharer) watched 4.9% more commercial TV and saw 12% more ads. But it's the principle of the thing: someone is getting money from something that touches something one of us once touched, therefore the money belongs to us. This is the style of corporate thinking that brought Britain its great economic gains from 1997 to 2007, after all.At a time when so many jobs are being lost in the wider economy, it is especially important that our gravy train be maintained.

Internet service providers have the ability to change the behaviour of those customers who illegally distribute content online. They have the power to make significant change and to prevent their infrastructure from being used on a wholesale scale for illegal activity. They have the power to stop people looking at the cover of Virgin Killer. They have a secret magic wand that will fix everything wrong with the media industry's income streams and they are refusing, with malice aforethought, to use it. If they are not prepared to give us all the free money we ask for and a bit more besides, they should be compelled to do so.

I know four languages, and I found that every language has its own nuances of meanings that you simply can't express in other languages. Air in French does not mean the same as air in English. It has other associations to it. The nice thing about everybody in Luxemburg speaking at least four languages, is that you can use them all in conversation. This greatly enhances the depth and detail of it. Which is a very beautiful thing. You should try it.

So the only reason you expect it to be English, is that you are arrogant. Wanna know who else behaves like this? The french.And the Germans would be too, if not for the fear of still being called a Nazi, when it was not them but their grandparents who did it.

Did you know that the USA nearly voted for German as their main language? And now Spanish becomes more and more dominant too. From your point (USA I guess) nearly everybody south of you speaks Spanish. In Africa tons of people speak French. In the middle east, Arabic is an international language too. And don't let me get started about China owning the USA and them being able to quickly assimilate other cultures. I already have to go to Chinese (eg. tudou.com) sites for some stuff.

If you come to my country, learn my fuckin' language! What would you think, if I came to the USA or UK, and *expected* you to speak German (or Luxemburgish, which happens to be my mother's tongue)?

Your arrogance disgusts me. It's always English, English, English!

P.S.: I just found out a nice way to turn a seemingly trollish post into a more nice post: Put the first invert the order of the paragraphs. That way those with the most anger come last.;) Oh, and my reaction is the reaction you could expect from a large part of the Europeans. You not liking it does not make it a troll. You're supposed to not like it.;)

I think the general rule for the "come to X country and learn its language" is for people intending to live there, not vacation there.

If I was moving to Thailand, I'd sure as Hell learn Thai as soon as I could - preferably before I got there. You're just so disadvantaged not knowing the local tongue.

That aside, we're becoming a more globalized world every day. I've done odd jobs and had guys ask me in Spanish if they needed extra people. I don't speak the language, but I can understand it to a degree and ge

Did you know that the USA nearly voted for German as their main language?

They didn't. They had a vote somewhere whether the text of new laws should be published in German in addition to the English language publication, but that vote failed. That is not nearly the same as having "German as their main language".

I know four languages, and I found that every language has its own nuances of meanings [...] If you come to my country, learn my f[****]n' language! What would you think, if I came to the USA or UK, and *expected* you to speak German (or Luxemburgish, which happens to be my mother's tongue)?

Your arrogance disgusts me. It's always English, English, English!

English is [ironically] the/lingua franca/ of international business and the GP is right in that most everywhere you go you'll find someone with a smattering of English. Of course that's true for other languages too - it often depends on the visiting tourist population as well as past colonisations.

I only learnt French and Russian at school but do try to speak the language appropriate to any country I visit: Mandinki, Kswahili, Spanish, Tunisian, etc.,... I live in Newport, South Wales now so I should rea

So the only reason you expect it to be English, is that you are arrogant.

Have you considered that maybe it's not because he is arrogant, but because he is factually correct? English is the common language of communication throughout Europe (and the most of the world in general), like it or not.

I'm a native German and English speaker myself. Sitting in both boats as I do, I can understand the sensitivities involved with favoring one language over another. But I find that English is really easily the best language for international communications.

English has several features that I think make it a better language. It's semantically open, unlike French. Adding new words to English is very simple. We can even create new verbs and nouns from the last names of people (ie. bork). It adapts existing foreign words easily. I'm often able to use "Ã¼ber" and "verboten" in English without getting at looks.

English doesn't require special accent marks in order define meanings. English has simplified definite and indefinite articles. Compared to German, "a", "an", and "the" are much simpler. English features no real gender. No worries about matching verbs, nouns, and articles; or even changing the meaning of a word. For possession, the Saxon genitive is efficient and simple. It accomplishes more in less space to say "John's car" rather than "the car of John". English also features simplified demonstratives, and very simplified declension of nouns. None of the der, den, dem, des conflicts that plague German and make it difficult for non-German speakers to learn. In English the placement of adjectives doesn't affect its meaning. In French you have scenarios like "un homme grand" (a great man) and "un grand homme" (a tall man). In English, you rely on the context of the adjective. Finally, English has a more direct simplified sentence structure.

of course, English has its downside, thinking contextually in English to find meaning vs thinking literally in French can create some confusions, I'm sure.

Sure, some people advocate English everywhere just because they're linguistically lazy and somewhat arrogant, but truly, there legitimate reasons for stressing English as an international language of commerce vs say, Irish where it can take an "aoi" to stress a "long i" sound, or Chinese were choosing a written form is as much a decision about your politics as it is about efficiency (simplified used in China vs traditional used in Taiwan).

Wherever you go in the world, you're not going to have to look too hard to find someone with some useable level of ability in English, you can't say that about Chinese.

I say, "Just look for the Chinese restaurants." No, really, I'm being serious -- I've done some globetrotting, and everywhere I've gone, I've found Chinese restaurants. It's kinda funny, really, when even on remote tiny non-touristy islands in the Spanish-speaking part of the Caribbean, or on the tiny islands of the Pacific Northwest, you can find at least one Chinese restaurant somewhere.

This reminds me of a true story of a friend of mine. He's an interesting bloke -- his dad sounds like the punchline to a weird joke, as an Iraqi Jew living in Singapore and running a Cajun pork BBQ restaurant...

But anyway, let's call my friend Andy. He grew up partly in China, and speaks fluent Chinese and English. He was in Mexico City visiting some friends, and was walking across part of town to visit some other friends for a party. Only he'd gotten lost, and didn't speak a lick of Spanish. So what does he do? He finds the local Chinese restaurant. He walked up to the counter and asked, in flawless Chinese, how to get to XYZ address.

The Chinese proprietor and cash register girl just stood their with their mouths wide open for a moment, before finally getting out, "Why are you speaking Chinese to us?" To which Andy replied, "Because I don't speak Spanish." "Oh. Well, you take a right here and a left there..."

So seriously, knowing Chinese could also be extremely useful for international travelers. If you ever get lost, just find the local Chinese restaurant.

English is in fact the most widely spoken language, and it is a second language to the largest number of people.

There are more native speakers of Chinese, but with the multiple dialects, you've already got a huge problem. English has lots of differences depending on where you are, but you can still communicate with people, and you can always ask for clarification for specific terms.

None of this has anything to do with China or Japan becoming an economic power. I

I mean, their current methods have apparently atleast been in breach of investigative laws in several states and they may still end up in mess because of it, but ending the thing will atleast lessen the exposure..

Alternative explanation is that they have actually understood that extortion is bad.. nah.. not likely.

It also shifts the costs of enforcement (and the negative PR) to the government. Why bother pursuing people you *think* might be infringing and deal with the situation via civil means when you can just have the FBI issue the appropriate paperwork, and have them bust the door down?

Won't matter in the long run. They can't stop the sharing no matter what they do. But they can keep making life difficult until the public comes to realize sharing is impossible to control and instantly dismisses these ridiculous attempts to do so. That may be a long time. After more than a century, we're still trying to beat down Creationism.

They've tried technological and legal solutions. They've tried appeals to morals and ethics (think of the starving artists), but they've undercut themselves mightily on that one. You can't outlaw or DRM gravity. It's hard enough to lock things up, let alone ideas. Might as well try to stop thinking from happening. Prohibition is a good example. No matter how tightly the law policed the borders to stop imports of alcohol, patrolled the countryside to stop domestic production or make sure it was being denatured, it was just too easy to rig up a still and make your own. Brewing isn't hard. Sharing data is much, much easier than brewing. Even if they manage to restrict all hardware to that with built in, functioning DRM, it will be like stills: always easy to rig up a bootleg machine without the restrictions. Drinking can be bad for health. It can even be, sometimes, good for health. Sharing is a far healthier and more necessary activity. To progress, we need sharing. That's what the patent system was supposed to encourage. Copyright is a little different-- it focuses on encouraging production rather than the sharing of ideas. Apparently sharing was expected to be so easily accomplished once copyright expired that they didn't think to provide provisions in copyright law to help sharing along, such as funds for public libraries. At least, I'm not aware of any such provisions.

Might as well try to outlaw or control the ultimate in sharing: sex. We already have those ridiculous Monsanto cases over patented varieties of corn just doing what comes naturally and spreading into fields owned by farmers who haven't paid. What happens when we advance to the point we can genetically modify ourselves? Will our modified children have to get permission from and make payments to the biotech company to marry and have children? Would any society submit to such a thing? The RIAA's views don't have a prayer, let alone make sense.

I prefer it. I am in my 40's and grew up in the 80's. Piracy was rampant among the geeks then. In the 90's more so. Then the kids that only remember a world of the Internet. Do you really believe that they consider making a digital copy of a file is a crime? That it robs somebody? Remember these kids will be Judges and Lawmakers someday. No matter how much money the RIAA throws at it, it won't help in the long run.

Button makers had a monopoly at one time. Can you imagine that, buttons that go for 5 cents ea

I mean, their current methods have apparently atleast been in breach of investigative laws in several states and they may still end up in mess because of it, but ending the thing will atleast lessen the exposure..

Alternative explanation is that they have actually understood that extortion is bad.. nah.. not likely.

No -- look at the actual wording: "...working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users"

Note that's not "repeated illegal downloaders", it's repeated users of file-sharing services, whether legal or not. It means that they've learned that they can't get their way via the courts, so now they want the right to get their way without having to go through the courts. This is a bad development.

Just like the French. First you give us fried potatoes to clog our arteries, then you dump your "huddled masses" from your country to the U.S., and now you invent the 3-strike law to ban us from ISPs without due process of law (a jury trial).

>>>The RIAA is going to try to working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users.

Which leads me to ask - what would entice an ISP to follow the RIAA's 'suggestions'? Very few of them have anything to do with the entertainment industry directly. And I believe the DMCA renders immunity to anyone acting as an ISP/gateway IIRC. On the other hand, you have a paying customer.

It would help to know what weapon an opponent such as this is going to use.

Yes, but music files are relatively extremely small these day compared to video. You probably consume the same magnitude of bandwidth looking at your average webpage these days. Or more watching youtube.

Use the Macrovision technology where the audio is distorted in a way which is not detectable by the human ear, but by which trying to feed the audio out signal into a CD record/computer results in a useless copy.

That's not how Macrovision works, and I don't think what you describe is possible.

You fool, people are downloading movies, music, unlicensed compilers, and EVEN ENTIRE BOOKS! All this content is slowing it down for the rest of us. The internet isn't a big truck you can just keep dumping things on, it's a series of tubes.

How else can we make way for legitimate, low-bandwidth services like Comcast OnDemand if we keep allowing this onslaught of unapproved content?

And as more and more users become interested in mass streaming media, a less restrictive ISP will suddenly show up and steal all their customers away.

It's bandwidth. Bandwidth is relatively cheap - what Comcast users are allocated in a month, most servers push out in a single day, yet my cable bill costs more than any one of my servers.

The infrastructure is already there, and much of it was built with government funds anyway. With deregulation and all that fun stuff, there is a lot of room for a new player to join the game, with a slightly less greedy image and a whole lotta more intertube goodness. In reality, these cheap alternatives already exist in many areas, they just don't advertise because, well, I don't expect the cable company to give good ad rates to its competitors... but they exist, and while some of them suck, a lot of them are far more generous than their colossal adversaries.

And as more and more users become interested in mass streaming media, a less restrictive ISP will suddenly show up and steal all their customers away.

It's bandwidth. Bandwidth is relatively cheap - what Comcast users are allocated in a month, most servers push out in a single day, yet my cable bill costs more than any one of my servers.

The infrastructure is already there, and much of it was built with government funds anyway.

... and completely controlled (largely) by a duopoly: either the telephone or cable company.

There is no real competition in most areas. I hate Comcast (my local cable company) and Qwest (my local phone company) with a passion. Where I live, there are exactly three choices: those two companies and Clearwire's WiMAX (who.. guess what? Comcast has a small stake in).

This is exactly why the "network neutrality" crowd is yelling. The vast majority of customers have no choice.

I don't want my viewing habits tracked, they have no guaranteed right to track my viewing habits anyway, and they'll be receiving the same amount of ad revenue regardless of whether I watch their ads or not.

Just like the French. First you give us fried potatoes to clog our arteries

Hey, wait a minute! French fries allegedly come from Belgium [wikipedia.org]. Both the French and the Belgians consider the term "French fries" to be grossly unfair: the Belgians feel they deserve the credit, and the French feel they don't deserve the blame.

Of course, there is the possibility that the first prototype fries were planted in Belgium by French agents provocateurs.

Go ahead and quote quote wikipedia, but I saw on the History Chanel last night (Modern Marvels, the fast food episode) that French fries were "discovered" and brought back to America by Jefferson after his post as ambassador to the French. So, even if they were invented in Belgium first, America made the french fry a staple food and Jefferson brought them to us from the French.

Downloading shows isn't 'naughty' either. If my comcast PVR (I'm on unit number 3, soon to be 4, and then just buying a tivoHD) would record things properly without killing the sound every 3 seconds, I wouldn't need to go through the effort of downloading content that I'M ALREADY PAYING A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT FOR AND *NOT* RECEIVING.

It's worse than that - they want you to think that all filesharing of music/video is illegal, which isn't true either. The trouble is, the music and video content that doesn't come from them and is perfectly legal to share is in fact produced by their competitors. So in stopping you sharing 'their' content, they also have an incentive to stop you sharing anybody else's content. Sharing of linux distros or software is really an irrelevance here, what they're really doing is trying to stop Joe Public's mindsh

"Meanwhile, music sales continue to fall. In 2003, the industry sold 656 million albums. In 2007, the number fell to 500 million CDs and digital albums, plus 844 million paid individual song downloads -- hardly enough to make up the decline in album sales."

Wow, so now that people are given the option of buying only the track they like instead of the whole album... album sales are dropping. Imagine that! I guess blaming it on piracy is easier than making all 12 songs on an album worth buying.

500 million albums844 million singles==================1344 million sales in 2007 >>> 656 million in 2003. Someone at RIAA needs help with math. Yes more singles sold mean less money, but it also means more happy customers which builds long-term income over the next decade.

They also neglected to mention a few other facts: there has been an ongoing boycott of RIAA fare since Napster; CDs cost as much as DVDs to purchase, yet movies are incredibly expensive to produce while the cost of producing a CD has dropped to the point where bar bands now record without the RIAA; that RIAA fare's quality has dropped far more than their sales have (with one or two exceptions, such as Kid Rock and Buckcherry); that last century an independantly produced CD was practically impossible, yet today there are more indie titles than RIAA titles and the indies are eating the RIAA's lunch. Most indies encourage their songs to be shared.

Oh yeah, fuel costs skyrocketed during that period, and fuel is cheap again but we're in a worldwide recession.

I honestly don't think they're stupid, just calculating. They can't do anything about a recession or competition from other forms of entertainment without lowering their prices (something which might cut into their profits). They refuse to blame themselves and their own poor music quality. (That's just crazy talk.) So what's left are "evil Internet pirates." They pin as much blame as possible onto pirates and then try to get rules passed to stop the evil pirates. The rules have the side effect of giving the RIAA labels more money/power. (e.g. a mandatory $5/monthly "pirating" fee on your ISP bill, shotgun lawsuits, claiming that ripping CDs is illegal, claiming that all file sharing is illegal etc.) The end result, if they get their way, is a record industry that stays in power even when the market is trying to push them to the sidelines and that keeps profits artificially high.

This is an example of the ineffectiveness of "Hanlon's Razor" (Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity), but I think my more cynical "mcgrew's razor" applies here: Never attribute to stupidity or incompetence that which can be adequately explained by greedy self interest.

Considering that individual song downloads practically eliminate the physical media and distribution costs, I suspect that the RIAA isn't being completely honest regarding their profitability. Actually they don't mention profitability; they want you to assume they're hurting based on their sketchy statistics.

The multimedia corporations are out to destroy a competing system. Otherwise why go to the trouble to alienate your base? Filesharing does a complete endrun around them and they don't like it. And like any major threat those corporations are reacting accordingly. They can't buy or control it themselves so as a group, this time hiding under a shell name RIAA, MPAA, etc (you know conspiracy), have government control or destroy it.

You got it. Unfortunately for them, however, I think they've become obsolete, now that any kid with a video cam can make a film or tv show and get worldwide exposure, and any musician can reach the world with his or her music. So all their attempts at buying or controlling it or otherwise stuffing it back in the bottle, are futile.

Working with the ISPs is an arms race at best. The ISPs block stuff, P2P devs come up with more and more devious ways to work around the blocks. Plus, in markets where competition is good, consumers will just vote with their feet.

Give it up, RIAA. Come up with better ways of making money. No one is willing to spend $20 to buy an album with 1 or 2 good songs on it. And few are willing to pay for what they will always be able to get for free.

For the individuals caught in them, the RIAA individual lawsuits really, really suck. Extortionate demands, no real ability to defend yourself(if your day in court costs you more than you can afford, it isn't your day in court), etc. On the other hand, though, the lawsuits as a tactic have been magnificently ineffective, and do very little to project RIAA power beyond those directly affected(and, indeed, the seem to project displeasure much further than they project obedience).

Focusing on the ISPs is potentially much more sinister. ISP user agreements, for anything other than expensive business accounts, typically have pretty broad service agreements, so they almost definitely won't even need to involve the courts to cut you off. If the RIAA and friends are successful, they could easily obtain de facto veto power over almost anybody's internet access, without any actually illegal conduct(unlike their present tactics). There is no reason to suspect that they would be any more discriminating or accurate in using such power than they currently are in filing lawsuits(probably less, in fact, since it will be cheaper than lawsuits), so the circle of the affected will be even wider. Not good.

So the RIAA is offering to "work with ISPs." From the sound of it, what they want is for the ISPs to do a lot of work monitoring users, and take a serious public-relations risk for banning them. If I ran an ISP, I would not exactly be falling over myself to embrace those new headaches.

What's in it for the ISPs? If the RIAA is offering a carrot, then the size of the carrot is limited by the ever-diminishing money the RIAA has to offer. If they're trying to threaten with a stick, they're relying on either regulation, lobbying, or lawsuits -- in all three arenas, ISPs are more than a match for them in terms of money and influence.

The more I think about it, the more I realize this is just a face-saving tactic, and the "cooperative relationship" can't last because it's contrary to the ISPs best interests.

What's in it for the ISPs? If the RIAA is offering a carrot, then the size of the carrot is limited by the ever-diminishing money the RIAA has to offer.

Not necessarily.

The carrot could be the ISP's right to manipulate their user's traffic in other ways that make them money. If the RIAA can help them legitimize selective traffic management, then ISPs can start signing agreements with content providers.

Given the reputation that the RIAA has built themselves with the lawsuits, I'm a little skeptical of their ability to help the ISPs legitimize anything, but if it succeeded it could be a big moneymaker for the ISPs.

There may be other, less obvious, benefits to ISPs as well.

We need net neutrality legislation to ensure that the ISPs can't do any of this.

Over the summer, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began brokering an agreement between the recording industry and the ISPs that would address both sides' piracy concerns. "We wanted to end the litigation," said Steven Cohen, Mr. Cuomo's chief of staff. "It's not helpful."

As the RIAA worked to cut deals with individual ISPs, Mr. Cuomo's office started working on a broader plan under which major ISPs would agree to work to prevent illegal file-sharing.

It looks like the RIAA could be lobbying governments to force ISPs to forward infringement notices.

I am worried about this because if some jack-ass at MediaSentry goes and mistakenly identifies my IP because I'm sharing some linux distros or whatever, then I get a note from my ISP saying they're slowing my service down because I'm a pirate. Now, I'm forced to sue the ISP in order to get the service I paid for. All the onus is on me to take action against the ISP to clear my name, this is much, much worse than what was happening before because rather than the RIAA having to prove that their copyrights have been infringed upon, it will be up to the accused to prove that he or she isn't guilty.

You don't even have to be sharing anything, since an IP on a tracker means
nothing: [torrentfreak.com] However, the tracker owners are aware of this, and trick these tracking companies by polluting the list of IP-addresses the tracker returns. That is one of the techniques The Pirate Bay uses, just to show how flawed the evidence gathering is.

>>>the RIAA individual lawsuits really, really suck. Extortionate demands, no real ability to defend yourself(if your day in court costs you more than you can afford, it isn't your day in court), etc.

Guns are cheap. "What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party

They were starting to get in trouble with the courts, because they were filing lawsuits, and they in many cases had insufficient evidence to prove wrongdoing.

There were many cases where they were prosecuting innocent people, and this would ultimately be seen as harassment/abuse of the courts, resulting in sanctions for the RIAA.

The new approach will be more expedient, and less costly, since their victims don't get any due process rights.

They just send a letter to your ISP, and your ISP assumes you guilty.

You no longer have a chance to prove your innocence. If the RIAA doesn't like you and wants your connection turned off, they'll now have the means to make it happen, if your ISP joins their program.

See the article:

Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.

The RIAA said it has agreements in principle with some ISPs, but declined to say which ones. But ISPs, which are increasingly cutting content deals of their own with entertainment companies, may have more incentive to work with the music labels now than in previous years.

Because the ISP's know damn well what will happen when people find out who they are.
Someone needs to dig this up fast and post it far and wide.
When these ISP's are raped by class action lawsuits and face customers bailing in droves, you will see a different tune.

Excellent point, plasmacutter. If one has a choice of ISP's, as most people do nowadays, why choose one that's in bed with the RIAA?

So, they're going to try running their extortions entirely outside the courts now? This'll be a good test of the ISPs.

Test Case: Subscriber gets cut off and sues the RIAA for tortious interference with contract.

The RIAA is now forced to prove, in front of a Judge, that they are not making "false claims and accusations" in order to induce your ISP to breach your contract. Now the RIAA is right back where they've started: in a civil trial with the same quality of evidence that isn't worth jack diddly in court.

An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."

If it's so illegal, then why did they sue for damages (that is, compensation) rather than prosecute file-sharers for a crime? You don't sue people because they robbed banks or stabbed someone, you sue because they owe you money for some reason.

So the real message they were sending to the public is, "File sharing takes money out of our pockets." Well, duh.

Because "illegal" isn't just criminality. It's also conceivably tortious, meaning you can have civil law violations.

Infringement can either be tortious, criminal, or both. There's truthfully no way for them to pin criminal charges on anyone they've "caught" in that "dragnet" of theirs, so they're trying for civil violations which have less stringent requirements for proving a tort was committed by the parties. Unfortunately for them, they don't have much of a valid case in any of the instances so they're

An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."

That says it all really. They have managed a disinformation campaign to make people think that file sharing is illegal. No mention of the fact that it is perfectly legal if you have rights to the work, it is public domain, or you are using it under "fair use" terms, or a number of other more obscure legal circumstances.

Think of it this way, nobody bats an eyelid when you say "filesharing is illegal", but you would get some surprised looks if you said "video recording is illegal" or "photocopying is illegal" - they have managed to taint the technology with a possible illegal use.

As with the VCR piracy that was said to destroy the entire movie industry decades ago it was the very same deal. People who saw their outdated business in peril convinced officials (that don't use the technology and don't how about it's workings and benefits) to outlaw those who tried to improve how things are done, so they can make more money of prolonging the process of adaption.

They don't really care if you share that AC-DC file, you can sample it from the radio (they've been pushing the hell out of AC-DCs latest album). It's their competetion's tunes, the indies, who don't have access to the radio that they don't want you to share.

It says "The RIAA is going to try to working with the ISPs to limit file-sharing services and cut off repeated users.". So they're not going to take you to court, they're just going to get your ISP to kick you off and with any luck blacklist you. ISPs are presumably so scared of the RIAA that they'll comply wherever possible.

Heh... The biggest question I would have is that how are they going to get legit PI licenses to investigate all of that; they can't have this plan without breaking the law in the same manner they've been doing with the lawsuits themselves. And with this plan, now they're involving the ISPs with those civil liabilities. Nice...

If I were an ISP, I'd tell them to go stuff themselves unless they had proof obtained in a manner that a court of law would consider legit.

An RIAA spokesman is quoted as saying that the litigation campaign has been "successful in raising the public's awareness that file-sharing is illegal."

It's also raised public awareness that the RIAA is the scum of the earth who will sue 12 year old girls for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've personally never understood the concept that any kind of publicity that could make people spit on you when you walk on the street could possibly have any positive value down the line.

The RIAA has taken to suing a lot of people who turned out to be innocent, on very flimsy evidence. If there is one thing that Americans generally dislike, it's programs, no matter how well-intentioned, that end up often getting the wrong people.

The RIAA has taken to suing a lot of people who turned out to be innocent, on very flimsy evidence.

Citation needed please. Specifically I would be interested to know how many people the RIAA has sued, and of those people, how many have been found innocent in court. Anyone who has settled must be excluded from this count since their guilt or innocence has not been proven. Thanks.

It's not worth it to go after individuals because of all the bad press, so instead attack the technology?

How about instead the RIAA just get over it? When the horse and buggy gave way to automobiles, buggy makers found another line of work. The recording industry should accept their fate, redefine themselves, and find a niche.

I don't think the ISPs will bite down on this. The ISP will obviously need to report the results to the RIAA, otherwise the RIAA will cry foul. Then, if the ISP misses an obvious "illegal activity" the ISP might be held liable by the RIAA for not protecting the RIAA's intellectual property.

The internal corporate reality is that the old, hard-liner Baby Boomers have seen the writing on the wall and taken early retirement to spend more time with their families and write their memoirs, or they have been sacked for year after year of plummeting revenues. They have been replaced with Gen X or near-Gen X people and younger who are not deaf to the scorn of their peers nor to the trends in technology and music consumption.

The legal reverses include losing individual cases and having entire methodologies banned by the courts, but what's perhaps worse is that defeating the RIAA has become a teaching exercise for entire law schools. When future generations of lawyers are being trained to fight evil with your organization as the EVIL, you know this particular strategy is in trouble.

The new political calculations are what others have mentioned and discussed here, that they're now pinning their hopes on winning the debate over net neutrality. But they don't have a good shot at that because too many other players' interests, players who are much bigger and richer than the RIAA, are aligned against them. Never mind the consumers, since they never count for the people like those in the RIAA who like to play like they're Masters of the Universe.

Technological innovation continues, well, at least in the forms in which people use it to access music. iTunes is the model now for how people get new music. CDs? Please. Downloads in all their forms are the way anyone under 35 now gets their music. Artists may be in the music business, but the RIAA is in the CD business. The RIAA would have as much luck trying to force everyone to go back to 8-track as trying to force them to go back to CDs.

Consumer behavior has irreversibly shifted against the RIAA. As others have pointed out, the cartel made sense when it was hard to produce professional sounding music and difficult to distribute it. Both those barriers have been almost totally eliminated. Musicians can do it all themselves now, and fans can find them through so many channels like Facebook, etc. that are outside the control of the cartel. But it's not just the How and Where that have escaped the cartel's control, it's also the What. The average band and average fan have a wealth of indy music to sample and find influences in that is beyond the wildest dreams of those brought up under the tyranny of the old cartel system. And they have found the quality of the stuff out there to be much higher than the synth-pop that cartel-produced music ultimately devolved into.

So the RIAA is the walking dead. The record stores like Tower Records have already gone. The parlor game now is to guess how much longer the RIAA needs to bleed before they implode entirely. Their abandonment of the legal strategy is a strong indication that we don't have much longer to wait. If this recession/depression lasts longer than 6 months, the RIAA will not survive the year.

I'm wondering how our friend NewYorkCountyLawyer feels, waking up to discover the legal war is over? Or is it? We're all suspicious of the RIAA but my mind harkens back to the pictures of the liberation of Paris in World War II. Wonder if NYCL feels that way?

Well my initial reaction is this:

If it's true... it's about time. Meanwhile, what about the unfortunates who are presently entangled already in these unjust lawsuits? Why won't the RIAA drop those cases too? If it was bad business to start them, why isn't it bad business to keep on throwing good money after bad? I hope consumers will remember this 5 1/2-year reign of terror, and will shun RIAA products, and I hope the legal profession will place a black mark next to the names of those "lawyers" who participated in this foul calumny.

If I have any additional thoughts I'll be appending them here [blogspot.com] in my "Editor's note".

Speaking as a P2P developer, this again raises the question of why the DMCA safeharbour provisions have never been applied by various defenses. (NYCL!) This change in behavior amounts to overly broad DMCA takedown notices, which conspicuously weren't part of RIAA scare tactics before.

1. If I was aware of a potential defense that was never articulated in a filed public legal document, I wouldn't discuss it with an anonymous stranger on Slashdot.

2. If you are so knowledgeable about this defense which all of the defendants' lawyers have overlooked, why don't you make your case for it now, and tell us what section or sections of the DMCA you are referring to, what other legal authority you have for it, and how it would be applicable to a person who is a engaged in file sharing over Limewir